To Start Over

OK, I've received a complaint or two about the rules for this booklist thing. Or rather, lack thereof.

So I'm humbly asking for your permission to start over. I have here the rules I suggest we use, though of course, we don't have to. That being said; shall we have a go?

Proposed Rule #1. The books would have to directly engage spiritual themes.

What's a spiritual theme? Frankly, I'm not 100% sure, however if you think of these books as kinds of "psalms, hymns and spiritual songs" that you read, then I think you'll kind of get what I'm trying to do here.

Proposed Rule #2. No author would appear twice on the list.

This rule is for variety's sake; I'm sure we could very easily come up with ten books by C. S. Lewis that each justify a place on the list described above. But I'm trying to make room for some other people here too. So I suggest that though we could, for discussion sake, bring up many different books by Lewis, only one of his books would ultimately end up on the list.

Proposed Rule #3. Only books that are fiction or creative non-fiction will be accepted as considerations for the list.

Maybe later we can have a list for such beloved works as Blue Like Jazz, Mere Christianity and The Knowledge of the Holy, but for now I'd like to see a list devoted to celebrating the particular poetry and beauty of the more strictly creative form. So (sticking to our C. S. Lewis theme), this rule would allow anything ranging from Lewis' The Cycle Of Bondage (a book of poetry), to The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (a children's story), to The Great Divorce (a kind of character driven, theological discourse), but would stop something like, say, The Four Loves (a series of essays) at the door. This sounds unfair even as I write it though I don't mean it to; as I've said, I'd love sometime to put together a little somethin' our friends who labor strictly in the field of non-fiction prose.

But maybe for now we could get started on this list?

Proposed Rule #4. Anyone that wants to contribute to this list may do so.

Not that they'll be that many who actually do want to join, but just in case...

Blue about 'Blue Like Jazz'?

I've been reading this book recently, and have been transformed by many of the ideas in it. I find it to be refreshing and inviting, and have been reading it as often as possible.
Unfortunately however, many people seem to think it to liberal and to open, at least in circles I've been in, and I've had trouble separating these people's preconceptions about the book with the 'Relevant' postmodern culture. I would wonder why so many people respond in such a reactionary way, instead of reading it and finding truth through it. Thoughts anyone? Has anyone had the same experience?
(Besides all that, I just love the book so much, I wanted to open a discussion about it!)

I have joined the ranks of "Mere Image".

Well I'm here at last. I don't know what I'm going to do here but I'm here. Now time for a picture.

Everything

Queen of Arts (who baked some tarts, all on a summer day) once said I was crazier than her. Now I am going to prove it. I will list every movie I've seen this year, and provide a capsule review, and links to more incisive reviews. I'll order the movies by country since I don't remember the order in which I viewed the movies. To best exploit the linkage, choose to open in a new window and if you want to know the rating of a movie check IMBD.

Denmark

Ordet (1955, directed by Carl Th. Dreyer) I still don't know what to make of Ordet. And there is no way I can start a discussion about this movie unless you've seen it as well. But I'll try to do my best (or my most mediocre).
It is a movie that affirms faith, but could've been made by an agnostic. Dreyer seems to have pushed his character's faith until he can see it is faith they have, and not the petty pride of religionists or that they believe so that they would be rewarded.

I could say that Dreyer plays Satan to a cast of Jobs. I could rattle off the names of his characters, and I could provide a synopis, but you wouldn't learn a thing. I watch my friends move around each other and how they touch each other. From this I can learn about them; I learn if anyone is aloof, and I see who acts gracefully, moves around everyone, and draws everyone closer. While watching the movie I can watch Inger (a young housewife, pregnant with her third child and her first son). As she cares for her daughters, intervenes for her brothers-in-law, and persuades her father-in-law of her plans. For her husband Mikkel, she tries to gather the scraps of his scattered faith. Of the characters I identify the most with Mikkel.

England



The most fun I had watching movies this year was when I saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail and A Hard Day's Night.
A Hard Day's Night, well where should I begin? Well we're just friends and he's a very clean old man and she's grotty. It's a day in the life of the Beatles (just like Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich), as their fans would imagine it, and how the band wishes their life could've been. The movie is sophisticated, sublime, and transluscent bliss. What's that suppossed to mean? I don't know. I just thought it sounded distuingished-like (that's an in-joke, you know).
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, how do I talk about this movie without sounding like the total dork that I am? First Monty Python is the child of the previous film, and the Pythons filled the hole the fab four vacated in England's heart. (Though not as cute). Before watching the movie just remember Logres is a magical world where Karl Marx is God, there is a backing track for every young prince who wants to sing, witches are light as a feather, anarchist peasants who harvest mud, killer rabbits, an enchanter named Tim and we're all getting better.
You can call it crude or vulgar or British, but so was Chaucer, and just see how much better our world is because of him! Now we know we mustn't ever say "Ni" to old women, and we must all remember that once a week we must BRING OUT OUR DEAD!



The Mission, however is not a fun movie. Europe covets the tribal peoples of Brazil. But those people are protected by a mission of Jesuit priests. So the Catholic countries threaten to convert to Protestantism if the tribes' protection is not lifted. Two questions are asked in the movie, when should we comprimise? And when is violence ever just?
Another movie from England (and Canada) is the animated gem Watership Down.
A small band of rabbits, fly from the destruction of their warren and search for a perfect warren, and other rabbits like themselves. It is a movie about Utopia, and how such a world could be possible. Where individuals fulfill archtypal roles instead of remaining as their little old selves who join to gratify their own desires. The chief virtue of this Utopia is courage-- without courage none of the other virtues are possible.
Also, the movie is wonderfully animated, with realistic rabbits, watercolor scenery (the best I've seen), and the occaissional primitivtist figures.
My only disappointment is that the movie is too short so some of the events from the book are left out.
Also I saw the 1996 adaptation of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. A very good comedy involving gender confusion, but honestly how much of the dialogue could I understand?
France



I saw a trio of movies by the great director Robert Bresson, A Man Escaped, A Diary of a Country Priest, and Pickpocket. Bresson is an ascetic director, similar to Dreyer and Ingmar Bergman. Ascetic not so to be scourge himself, but to remove anything that would keep the truth from being revealed. Including his actors' performances. He did not want performances, but his actors to do what the story required of them. Sometimes he shot over fifty takes to get the right shot.
The first Bresson movie I saw was A Man Escaped. I don't have to worry about giving away the end of the movie, it's in the title. But where and what did he escape from? He was held as a resistance member and he escapes from a Nazi prison in France. Also existentially he escapes from his doubts and fears, and assisting others in this sort of escape.
Shortly afterwards I saw Diary of a Country Priest. Here a young priest, new to his first parish, tries to make a sort of order of the souls entrusted to him, while dealing with his own fleshly weaknesses. One of the most interesting pieces of the film is how the priest's daily meal becomes eucharistic.
Pickpocket is movie about a petty thief stealing from others for the thrill of it. The movie is worth watching for the all the shots of hands, as the hands are shown as reveal the soul. The film's plot owes a lot to Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, particularly the cat and mouse game being played between detective and crook.
I really wish I could see these movies again and give them the fuller treatment they deserve.

Another somber French film is Ponette. Ponette is just a little girl whose mother had recently died in a car wreck. She cannot stay with her father as his work drags around, so she carries her grief from place to place. The adults are almost complete outsiders to the world of Ponette, and her friends- and when they come, they appear like angels to comfort her. The other children are like adults, and try to comfort her with food, love, and religion. They say if she listens to them then she will overcome her grief. There is only one thing that can "defeat" grief, but I wouldn't dream of telling you what that is. (This answer is also found in Ordet.)
Grand Illusion is by director Jean Renoir, son of painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The film is a prison escape movie of French officers from a World War I prison. Not one of your nasty Nazi camps, nice places where the Germans treat prisoners politely but wish they could treat them well. This is not really an escape movie like The Great Escape, but a movie about the nobility, and the future when they will be obsolete.
This movie inspired scenes in The Great Escape, Casablanca, and Stalag 17.
Also the movie is not only in French, but Russian, German, and English. I think one of the Russian lines is one of the funniest in the movie.

The lightest movie in the group is The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. This is one of those movie musicals where everyone sings all the time, and no one thinks of talking. While I was watching the movie I thought it provided a terrific understated rebuke to overblown chaos like Phantom of the Opera.

Germany



Soon I'll move onto Asia with movies from Japan and Mongolia, but for now I'm still in Europe with two movies from Germany, Run Lola Run and Faust. Germany has earned a reputation for advant-garde cinema and with these two movies from different eras show why.
The cheapest way to insult Run Lola Run is to say it's a meaningless video game movie.
It's not based on a video game (though it looks and acts like a video game), but it is a game; an intellectual puzzle on time and chance. Three times Lola must come up with 100,000 marks in 20 minutes for her boyfriend. He misplaced the Mob's drug money and they'll probably kill him if he doesn't get the money first. Each time she runs to get the money, different things happen, and people she runs into (forgive the pun), their lives are changed in different ways for each episode. What is chance? What is fate? And what is freewill?
Faust directed by F.W. Murnau, a master of the silent film. From what I've read Faust is not one his better films (those would be Nosferatru, and Sunrise). But it's good example of what is known as German Expressionism. Misshapen buildings, gothic interiors, dramatic lighting emphazaizing exaggerated shadows and suggestive lighting.

Take Note, Visionary Artists

Phil Vischer talks with SPU students about dreams, something called "jellyfish" and the lessons he learned the hard way.